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It's so much worse than this. Via instant messenger, Manning asked Assange whether Wikileaks could crack NTLM hashes. Assange said (paraphrasing), "Yeah, we ca

It's so much worse than this. Via instant messenger, Manning asked Assange whether Wikileaks could crack NTLM hashes. Assange said (paraphrasing), "Yeah, we can probably do that." Manning sent the hashes. Assange said he'd work on cracking them. A few days later, Manning asked if the hashes had been cracked. Assange replied that there hadn't been any progress. End of story. That's a federal crime. No hashes were cracked, let alone sent back to Manning. No additional access was gained. He simply agreed to accept the hashes from Manning, which were freely offered. Maybe he agreed because he didn't want to spook his source. Maybe he never even started hashcat. We'll never know. edit: source: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/886185-pe-123.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/886185-pe-123.html (middle of page 6)

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Ah. Yes. That makes sense. People like Manning and Snowden expose nastiness, but, at the same time, we absolutely need to ensure military and espionage secrets (Full disclosure: my father was in the CIA, but quit on moral grounds - http://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm http://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm). People die when military secrets get exposed. That's often completely unintended, but it happens anyway. My father had a post similar to that held by Valerie Plame. If he had been exposed (like she was), then all his contacts would have been murdered, along with, I am sure, folks he worked with legit.
- sitkack 6y ago
  When we have unfallable machinery in place to keep secrets safe, and no honorable people to leak them what will we have then? Is the world worse off because of the Pentagon papers? You bring up Plame, but I think you are doing your readers a disservice in not citing that she was exposed not by journalist, but by a people in power to silence the truth that her husband was speaking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair#Civil_suit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair#Civil_suit
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    I'm actually aware of the story. I'm outraged. My father was quite liberal. You may have missed the part where I mentioned that he quit the CIA on moral grounds? It's just that if he had been outed, there's a better than even chance that I would have been killed, so you might say that I have a right to my opinion.
    - sitkack 6y ago
      I can't argue against what could have happened, all leaks are not bad. Yes, your timeline would have changed if your father had been killed by a leak. But if we look at what did happen with Wikileaks esp relative to what Richard Armitage did to Valerie Plame and the CIA and that no known violence has occurred against [redacted] folks from the Wikileaks releases. All leaks and all leakers are not the same. Wikileaks put great effort in working with journalists to carefully redact information and report the news, to shine light where it needed shining. And Dick Army outed an agent and her team and forced it to shut down to harm a political opponent. If anyone belongs in jail it is Dick Army and not Julian Assange.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
        "Nothing bad did happen, so nothing bad will happen." is not an especially compelling argument. If we talk specifically about this one instance, with this limited set of actors, then nothing bad happened, but spilled secrets have killed a lot of people, throughout history. Some, it is good (like cracking ENIGMA), and some, it is bad (like that old H-bomb thingy). Both of those examples are because of dedicated espionage (and luck). In both of those cases, there were people that believed they were on the right side of history. There were also absolute scoundrels. The simple fact of the matter is, it's dangerous to greenlight reckless transparency. There's probably a number of folks that are ferociously dedicated to finding out where other folks are, so they can do Very Bad Things to them. In some cases, we might cheer them on, and in other cases, we might be horrified at what happens. One man's "freedom fighter" is another man's "terrorist." There's a number of folks that regret that the Germans lost WWII. They are absolutely, ferociously dedicated, and they'd like another crack at it. They would love to know a whole lot of things. There's also people that would like to change leadership in Damascus. Some of those folks are ones we'd like to have over for dinner, and some are ones that'd like to have us for dinner. It's not simple, and there's very, very few "white hats" in the game. Everyone is convinced they are the ones wearing the white hat, and anyone who dies is just "collateral damage." It's all fine and good, until we become "collateral damage." For example, I have friends with kids in the military. Some of them are in clandestine service. They may be doing nasty things, or they may be preventing others from doing nasty things to us. Chances are better than even, that it is both (maybe at the same time). I don't want to see my friends have to deal with their kids' death. We can't have every person that feels they are in the right simply leaking stuff. We also need to shine the light on some of the rot that grows in the dark. There's no simple solution. I should add that I have lived in nations run by dictators and thoroughly despotic governments. By the time I was 11, I had lived in two nations that experienced brutal, genocidal war. It can get very, very bad. Many of the kids I played with were likely tortured to death in secret detention centers. I think that the "dark rot" can be downright evil, and it does need to be unearthed. I'm not jingoistic, but I am someone that has been shown both sides of the issues.
ardy42 6y ago
> Via instant messenger, Manning asked Assange whether Wikileaks could crack NTLM hashes. Assange said (paraphrasing), "Yeah, we can probably do that." Manning sent the hashes. Assange said he'd work on cracking them. A few days later, Manning asked if the hashes had been cracked. Assange replied that there hadn't been any progress. > End of story. That's a federal crime. No hashes were cracked, let alone sent back to Manning. No additional access was gained. He simply agreed to accept the hashes from Manning, which were freely offered. That actually sounds like the crime of criminal conspiracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal) > In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime at some time in the future.... > [US] Conspiracy law usually does not require proof of specific intent by the defendants to injure any specific person to establish an illegal agreement. Instead, usually the law requires only that the conspirators have agreed to engage in a certain illegal act. > Under most U.S. laws, for a person to be convicted of conspiracy, not only must he or she agree to commit a crime, but at least one of the conspirators must commit an overt act (the actus reus) in furtherance of the crime.[24] You'd crack the hash as part of a plan (i.e. a conspiracy) to get unauthorized access to a computer system (a crime), and exchanging the hash is the actus reus. There are very good reasons why conspiracy is a crime, and it's very similar to other crimes like attempted murder. If someone plans to kill you, but they're caught before taking their shot, should they go free because no harm was actually done?

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

Ah. Yes. That makes sense. People like Manning and Snowden expose nastiness, but, at the same time, we absolutely need to ensure military and espionage secrets (Full disclosure: my father was in the CIA, but quit on moral grounds - http://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm http://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm). People die when military secrets get exposed. That's often completely unintended, but it happens anyway. My father had a post similar to that held by Valerie Plame. If he had been exposed (like she was), then all his contacts would have been murdered, along with, I am sure, folks he worked with legit.

sitkack 6y ago
When we have unfallable machinery in place to keep secrets safe, and no honorable people to leak them what will we have then? Is the world worse off because of the Pentagon papers? You bring up Plame, but I think you are doing your readers a disservice in not citing that she was exposed not by journalist, but by a people in power to silence the truth that her husband was speaking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair#Civil_suit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair#Civil_suit
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I'm actually aware of the story. I'm outraged. My father was quite liberal. You may have missed the part where I mentioned that he quit the CIA on moral grounds? It's just that if he had been outed, there's a better than even chance that I would have been killed, so you might say that I have a right to my opinion.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    I can't argue against what could have happened, all leaks are not bad. Yes, your timeline would have changed if your father had been killed by a leak. But if we look at what did happen with Wikileaks esp relative to what Richard Armitage did to Valerie Plame and the CIA and that no known violence has occurred against [redacted] folks from the Wikileaks releases. All leaks and all leakers are not the same. Wikileaks put great effort in working with journalists to carefully redact information and report the news, to shine light where it needed shining. And Dick Army outed an agent and her team and forced it to shut down to harm a political opponent. If anyone belongs in jail it is Dick Army and not Julian Assange.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      "Nothing bad did happen, so nothing bad will happen." is not an especially compelling argument. If we talk specifically about this one instance, with this limited set of actors, then nothing bad happened, but spilled secrets have killed a lot of people, throughout history. Some, it is good (like cracking ENIGMA), and some, it is bad (like that old H-bomb thingy). Both of those examples are because of dedicated espionage (and luck). In both of those cases, there were people that believed they were on the right side of history. There were also absolute scoundrels. The simple fact of the matter is, it's dangerous to greenlight reckless transparency. There's probably a number of folks that are ferociously dedicated to finding out where other folks are, so they can do Very Bad Things to them. In some cases, we might cheer them on, and in other cases, we might be horrified at what happens. One man's "freedom fighter" is another man's "terrorist." There's a number of folks that regret that the Germans lost WWII. They are absolutely, ferociously dedicated, and they'd like another crack at it. They would love to know a whole lot of things. There's also people that would like to change leadership in Damascus. Some of those folks are ones we'd like to have over for dinner, and some are ones that'd like to have us for dinner. It's not simple, and there's very, very few "white hats" in the game. Everyone is convinced they are the ones wearing the white hat, and anyone who dies is just "collateral damage." It's all fine and good, until we become "collateral damage." For example, I have friends with kids in the military. Some of them are in clandestine service. They may be doing nasty things, or they may be preventing others from doing nasty things to us. Chances are better than even, that it is both (maybe at the same time). I don't want to see my friends have to deal with their kids' death. We can't have every person that feels they are in the right simply leaking stuff. We also need to shine the light on some of the rot that grows in the dark. There's no simple solution. I should add that I have lived in nations run by dictators and thoroughly despotic governments. By the time I was 11, I had lived in two nations that experienced brutal, genocidal war. It can get very, very bad. Many of the kids I played with were likely tortured to death in secret detention centers. I think that the "dark rot" can be downright evil, and it does need to be unearthed. I'm not jingoistic, but I am someone that has been shown both sides of the issues.

ardy42 6y ago

> Via instant messenger, Manning asked Assange whether Wikileaks could crack NTLM hashes. Assange said (paraphrasing), "Yeah, we can probably do that." Manning sent the hashes. Assange said he'd work on cracking them. A few days later, Manning asked if the hashes had been cracked. Assange replied that there hadn't been any progress. > End of story. That's a federal crime. No hashes were cracked, let alone sent back to Manning. No additional access was gained. He simply agreed to accept the hashes from Manning, which were freely offered. That actually sounds like the crime of criminal conspiracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(criminal) > In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime at some time in the future.... > [US] Conspiracy law usually does not require proof of specific intent by the defendants to injure any specific person to establish an illegal agreement. Instead, usually the law requires only that the conspirators have agreed to engage in a certain illegal act. > Under most U.S. laws, for a person to be convicted of conspiracy, not only must he or she agree to commit a crime, but at least one of the conspirators must commit an overt act (the actus reus) in furtherance of the crime.[24] You'd crack the hash as part of a plan (i.e. a conspiracy) to get unauthorized access to a computer system (a crime), and exchanging the hash is the actus reus. There are very good reasons why conspiracy is a crime, and it's very similar to other crimes like attempted murder. If someone plans to kill you, but they're caught before taking their shot, should they go free because no harm was actually done?